Freedom Train (Part One)
The modest homes of the Borough of Queens
Are sturdy in their contrast to high Manhattan
Across which I saw drifting
The ashen smoke of the fallen towers
From this outpost of the city, a week after 'nine-eleven'
The tallest flagpole you could have imagined
Stands military-straight above a score of tollbooths
And the twelve lane thoroughfare of cars
Makes me feel like a visitor from a previous time -
But it's still that old union flag, however high it stands
Not a seat is empty on this sleek metal tube
That runs on its barely-subsidised tracks
Through a tiny stretch of the vast coastline
Stealing a peek at the brave Atlantic
A child concentrated on video games
Lends no mind to what her father sees. Around them,
Many tongues, ancestries, the faiths -
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poem by Frank Bana
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The Benefits of Chemotherapy
No hair to cut, blow-dry or wax
No eyebrows screaming to be plucked
No vanity to cultivate or tend.
No weight of desire, secure against
The blandishments of an erotic age,
Your energy too low to run your debts.
But there's sufficient time to clear the mind
And, while statistics do not speak as one
Your life might be prolonged, you might be saved.
Yes, time to figure out a lobster roll
Time to write a more reflective poem
To read the history books you choose
To discover where and who you've been
And trace the future hidden in your skin.
Time to call lost friends and greet
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poem by Frank Bana
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Love Letter to Poland from one Long Escaped....
I gazed across the continent
From where the lines of footprints came
Red blood buried in the soil
Topped with winter frost and all
The rivulets of sweat and screams
That tore the life from childhood dreams
The migrants knocking now again
Another band of fugitives
Stand exiled at the swinging door
Piteous and proud, the young men's faces pale
With tools and attitudes, muscles for sale
Torn tongues and morals frayed, running
From times of terrifying choice
These migrant armies, partisans
Drawn to the scent of money, not the cause
Their brothers left without a voice
Performing all it costs them to survive
And cling onto the ledges of a life.
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poem by Frank Bana
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My Childhood Temple Song
The winding melody fell to rest
Upon the word Shalom
Small intake of collective breath
The doors of the arc slid apart
Brocade of Torah shone
Children taught the ritual ways
Led forth by the hidden choir
Known only to The Name
Taught through repetition
In rabbinic tones mellifluent
What may be interpreted
What is kept the same.
I kissed the hem of prayer shawl
Never coming quite so near
To the girl beside me, while
She was my young heart's desire
The language that could reach her
More distant than the ancient one
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poem by Frank Bana
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Promises of Golden Fire (for Leonard, again)
You wrote your book of longing
Took down the songs of mercy
Every style of tenderness
Was in your verse exalted
Go you now to write
The last song of redemption
Before it is too late
To sing its vast refrain
You old bastard, Leonard
You faithlessly transcribed
The sacred rhymes and litanies
Of holy damaged lives
Leaving us to seduce the ones
Whom you long abandoned
At second hand, with only
Your creations at our side
The poems with the raven eyes
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poem by Frank Bana
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Promises of Golden Rain (for Leonard, again)
You wrote your book of longing
Took down the songs of mercy
Every style of tenderness
Was in your verse exalted
Go you now to write
The last song of redemption
Before it is too late
To sing its vast refrain
You old bastard, Leonard
You faithlessly transcribed
The sacred rhymes and litanies
Of holy damaged lives
Leaving us to seduce the ones
Whom you long abandoned
At second hand, with only
Your creations at our side
The poems with the raven eyes
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poem by Frank Bana
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Freedom Restoration
Land of the free
Where they know where your car is
Land of the free
Where they know where your cell is
Land of the free
Where they know your credit score
And they know your S.A.T.
Your calls are mapped
In the land of the free
Your Googles are tapped
(Well, you google for free..)
Indentured for life
To your college degree
In debt to your home
Built on pyramid loans
Free to roam the highways
With insurance approved
Free to travel the world
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poem by Frank Bana
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Forgetting to Ask Why (an American Lament)
These dollar bills, dead personage revered
While men who asked the future fell
And do not show their faces here, nor at Rushmore -
Dangerous to whom, and how, whose money on the bullets
That tore their brains apart? Airports of exhaustion
Choked by sleek metallic hulks, and boulevards
Carry the caskets of their names, In Memoriam.
This nation, vast and vulnerable in wealth
Allows its memory to recede, faster than strength
As if heroes, assets could be fixed, wasting instead
In wars of folly, self-justified and made (and what was staged
In Tonkin; when was made, the decision to invade?)
Forgetting to ask why, like a pachyderm self-blinded
In the changed, rotating maelstrom of the world.
Old bridges are eroding, with no constructive will
The past is redefined by instant new design
The causes of amnesia and neglect
Run deep as well as proximate. And those who must forget
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poem by Frank Bana
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Cigarettes and Me
It's really strange to me, I fault the companies
Tobacco companies, Big Cancer
For their inefficiency. All my life
I never smoked a cigarette, not a single one
Nor even a sweet toke - in that respect
Hash cookies did for me, once and decisively.
My Mum smoked occasionally, sort of socially
But Dad, he never did, though he was in the war
I wonder what he did for comfort
To relieve anxiety and pain, when members of his crew
Disappeared without a word and were not seen again.
I must have had a rather stress-free life, how come
They failed to hook me, reel me in at school
No ciggies in the playground. Why? At college
I was mildly into alcohol. That didn't last too long
It was travel, close encounters with the continent
Called Africa that made me wild and high.
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poem by Frank Bana
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Disambiguation (Jew Style)
Grotesque, misshapen, destiny bargained away
For normalcy - like everybody else, except - I am the Jew
Exceptional, yes, every person unacceptable
Or less than real, than how you feel I have become.
This Shylock I embrace, the twilight part I play
The hooded hooknose specter so beloved of the Nazi
Jews don't leave their young to starve their old to perish
In the cold, the wild, they make a shelter for their kin
The darkness here within. I will submit
To the picture frame, cartoon, the shame, but you
Will never purify me of the Jew. My works are poison
And so are the wells, wells of my cunning soul and eyes
My daughter and my son. Conversion not the kind of shame
Of which a Jew is capable, a pity this, there are so many
That I can perform, my plays sure to amuse and rouse
The pleasure that you take
But never will they expiate
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poem by Frank Bana
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